The 'rockyou2024' breach could be largest ever discovered.
In what may be the largest password breach in history, researchers have discovered a trove of around 10 billion credentials.
According to Cybernews, its researchers discovered 9,948,575,739 unique plaintext passwords on a hacking forum.
Believed to be from a mix of old and new data breaches, the passwords were cross-referenced with those included in a previous leak, including the 2021 rockyou breach. However this new trove adds 1.5 billion records to the 2021 version, reaching a total of 10 billion records, and combining passwords from previous breaches with new data, could create an unprecedented treasure trove for cybercriminals.
The password file was also named ‘rockyou2024.txt’ and was posted on July 4th by a user who has previously shared an employee database and student applications.
Treasure Trove
Commenting, Simon Lawrence, co-founder and director of i-confidential, said the leak could be a treasure trove for adversaries.
“While the passwords might have been compromised from breaches long past, the real threat is around password reuse, which means this vault of passwords could still provide significant value to adversaries,” he said.
“Password reuse plagues organisations and almost all internet users will be guilty of it. But when passwords are reused, this provides more opportunity for criminals to launch multiple attacks through the theft of a single password.”
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
